The LANDAU Monologues in Six Parts (5 of 6)

Part 5 of 6 — Amalie LANDAU Revisited

Through that period of discovery, and the preceding decade of stasis, I had been operating on the assumption that Amalie was a daughter of Haskel and Nesche LANDAU whose birth was just not captured in the Kempen records.  Based on her age at the birth of Regina in 1864, Amalie was born in about 1838.  That would fit well between the birth of Jette in December 1836 and Samuel in February 1842.  On the other hand, the Kempen birth records seemed to be complete throughout those years.  Why was Amalie’s birth missing?

Back in 1998, in the Myslowitz Jewish community marriage records, I had noted an 1861 marriage of Jakob BACH, Lehrer, and Jettel LANDAU.  In 2009, I returned to that marriage entry, made a copy and asked my mother to help me transcribe the old handwriting and translate it:
    According to the agreement of June 10 1861 regarding certification of marriages of Jews, the teacher Jacob Bach and the unmarried Jettel Landau both of Creuzburg, declares [sic] that from now on they wish to consider themselves married.
    Entered Myslowitz, the eighteenth of June, one thousand eight hundred sixty-one

This time, looking at the marriage of Jakob BACH and Jettel LANDAU, it seemed obvious that Jettel was Amalie, as her name appears (as mother) in the Myslowitz birth records.  (While the usual Hebrew name associated with Amalie is Malke, there was at least one woman in Breslau records who was referred to alternately as Amalie and Jettel.)

Later in 2009, when Don and I were in Israel, we visited a daughter of Trude HIRSCHMANN geb. BACH (1906-2004) who had her mother’s family papers.  (Trude was an older sister of Ja’acov BACH.)  She showed us published death notices for Jakob BACH and for Amalie BACH geb. LANDAU.  The April 1925 death notice for Amalie said that she was 89 — b.1835/1836.   Based on the birth date for Jette on 30 December 1836; Amalie would have actually been 88, in her 89th year, when she died on 26 April 1925.

(That 1861 marriage had lasted over 62 years when Jakob BACH died on 5 January 1924.)